Swan Song

by Judith K Ivie

  “Officer MacNamara, I need you to get Mrs. Harkness to the emergency walk-in center on the Silas Deane Highway to get her ankle looked after. I’ll pick her up from there in our Volvo, which is outside in the street. Then take Mrs. Farnsworth and Ms. Lawrence to the station to make formal statements. After that, arrange transportation for them to Ms. Lawrence’s condominium at The Birches. That’s probably plowed out already, but I’m afraid it’s going to take some work with a shovel here to make a passable walkway to your cruiser. Sorry,” he added as MacNamara sighed audibly. It had already been a long night for him and his partner. “I would advise you to avoid the larger tracks in the snow leading to the back of the garage, in case they offer any clues to the intruder here, but I’m afraid those were pretty well been messed up by Mrs. Farnsworth and Ms. Lawrence on the way in. At any rate, there are plenty more of the original tracks leading around to the back of the garage where the window is broken. Is all of this okay with you, Kate?”

  I nodded and refrained from looking at Margo, who was avoiding looking at her husband.

  “Officer Johansson, you’ll remain here with me and finish documenting the damage. Then we’ll turn the house over to the investigators to photograph and fingerprint. That will be helpful evidence for your insurance company, May,” he added as an aside. “We’ll also have to track down Parsons and Schenk. If we can locate them, we’ll bring them in for some serious questioning.” He paused and looked around once more at the devastation that had once been May’s cozy little home. “I’m really sorry this has happened, May,” he told her before turning to me.

  “Kate, will you help May pack a suitcase? She’ll be staying with us until we can get this mess sorted out. Until then, I’m afraid this house will be a crime scene.”

  May’s face crumbled. “Yellow tape and everything?” she whispered.

  John nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  For a minute, May looked as if she might give in to the tears that filled her eyes, no doubt remembering her humiliation of two years ago in full view of her neighbors, but she squared her shoulders and rose from her chair.

  “All right, John,” was all she said. Then she and I picked our way to the stairs leading to the second floor, braced for the further heartbreaking damage we knew we would find there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time May and I had made our statements at the Wethersfield Police Department headquarters and been driven to my condominium at The Birches, it was nearly two o’clock. We were exhausted and famished. I checked on Margo by phone and learned that her ankle had been x-rayed and was not broken, which was good news, then given a walking cast and released to her husband, which was not. “I can’t understand why he’s bein’ so … I don’t know, just plain pissy with me,” she whispered. “It’s not as if I made up a story about where we were last night. I told him when I called him exactly where we were and why. I just sort of forgot to mention that we were probably bein’ followed by two people who very likely are responsible in some way for May’s friend Lizabeth’s death.”

  “Mmmm,” I agreed. “It was just a little sin of omission, so to speak. You simply didn’t want him to worry.”

  “Exactly,” she agreed. “I mean, he’s carryin’ on as if we do this sort of thing all the time just to provoke him and make him look silly in front of the other police.”

  “Um, that’s actually true—not the provoking and making him look silly part, but you have to admit that we do tend to get ourselves involved in dangerous situations. Just be a very, very good girl tonight. I’m sure John will snap out of it in the morning. Was he able to get any information on Renata Parsons and Martin Schenk yet?”

  “Not that he’s tellin’ me,” she whispered. “Sorry, I’ve got to run, Sugar. I’m supposed to be soakin’ in a bubble bath.” She disconnected.

  I reported the conversation to May, who was in my kitchen, heating up a can of soup and making tuna fish sandwiches, all of which we wolfed down standing at the counter. “I don’t know about you, but the part about the bubble bath sounded really good to me,” I told her, wiping my mouth on a paper towel. “This place has two nice, big bathtubs, one up and one down. Shall I put out a fresh towel for you down here? I think my legs will just about carry me upstairs, and all my shampoo and stuff is up there. After that, we might feel like sitting down and trying to make sense out of the last twenty-four hours.”

  “The bath part sounds good,” May said wearily. “I feel grubby from head to toe. Luckily, I have my overnight things with me, so I have something clean to change into before John comes to drag me over to their place.”

  “Oh, don’t do that. Stay here with me for the night. Armando doesn’t return from Florida until tomorrow night. It will give John and Margo time to kiss and make up. We’ll get clean, and then we’ll feel better. We can chuck most of what we’re wearing right into the washing machine, and then you’ll have another spare outfit. Since we’re plowed out, and the streets are passable, I’ll just make a quick run down to the pond and spread some corn for the water fowl and feed the little birds by the overpass. They hunker down during a storm, but they’ll be hungry now, and they depend on me.”

  “Can’t Duane and Becky do that for you?”

  “I don’t even know where they are at this point, but I’d be willing to bet they’re still at the Hilton. It’s no problem, really—won’t take me more than fifteen minutes, I promise.”

  After a restorative soak and a change of clothes, I pulled on my boots and parka and headed for the pond. As usual, the town maintenance crew had plowed out the narrow street between the pond and the marsh, so it was passable. Having come to recognize my car as the chuck wagon over the preceding few months, the geese and ducks that were huddled together on the banks roused themselves and gave me a noisy greeting. I scrambled to spread twice as much cracked corn as usual on both sides of the road, and all of the waterfowl were soon lined up, eating busily. I looked around for my old goose with the angel wing, but Fray was nowhere in sight. Neither were the swans, but since they were perfectly capable of flying to open water—probably the Connecticut River, I didn’t worry about them so much.

  I refilled my pitchers with the nutty, fruity wild bird food I kept in a bin in the trunk and drove to the Main Street end of the pond, where it morphed into another stream that ran under the road. Again, the sidewalks were nicely cleared, and I was able to pull into the parking area of a nearby insurance business and walk down to the overpass. I whistled my usual two-tone arrival notice and was gratified when my cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, and a variety of finches and other small birds flew immediately to meet me. I spoke to them quietly and poured out my offerings in a long row to give them all plenty of room to eat without jostling each other. One of the cardinals, a regular I called Pip-Pip for the noise he made when flying, sat on a branch overhanging the fence next to the sidewalk and watched me with beady interest, his head cocked at an angle. As accustomed as he’d become to my presence, he always waited until I’d retreated a good fifty yards down the sidewalk before fluttering to the ground. Instead of getting my feelings hurt, I applauded his caution. These were wild things, and I wanted them to remain wild with a healthy wariness of human beings.

  As I walked slowly back to my car, I reflected on the events of the past week or so. How surreal it all seemed in the cold light of day, a mystery about a mystery, in effect, with a cast of characters that would boggle the mind of Christie herself. A mystery publisher dies a mysterious death while attending a mystery convention attended by hundreds of mystery writers. It seemed more than a little implausible, but those were the facts. Said publisher, who is a longtime friend and colleague of my business partner’s Aunt May, leaves a letter indicating that she wants to leave the aunt an extremely valuable manuscript, but only if May can solve a puzzle pointing to the location of the USB drive on which the manuscript resides. But despite breaking the initial code and learning everything possible about the author’s life, the dri
ve drive remains as elusive as the author did himself during his lifetime.

  The situation is further complicated by the appearance of a hotel security officer who is not, in fact, a security officer and the author’s former agent, who may or may not be stalking May. Whatever the case, both seem determined to locate the drive and its manuscript first—or to steal it from May if she gets to it faster.

  I climbed into the Jetta and turned the key, reassured by the engine’s sturdy rumble. My head ached, and I longed for my bed. If I felt that way at my age, I wondered, how must May be feeling? I had a sudden fear of her possibly nodding off in the bathtub, so I eased the car into gear and headed for home.

  I found May comfortably ensconced on the couch in my family room, my wireless phone pressed to one ear. I could hear the washing machine chugging away. I turned back toward the kitchen to make us both a cup of tea, but she held up one finger, signaling me to wait.

  “Sounds as if you’re having fun. How about Becky?” She listened for another moment with a smile on her face. “I’m not surprised. Becky is a very attractive young woman. Hold on a minute. Here’s Kate. Tell her what you told me.” She handed me the phone and whispered, “News on the Renata Parsons front.”

  I took the phone eagerly. “Hey, what’s going on there?”

  “These guys are so weird, you would not believe the pranks they play on each other,” Duane said without preamble.

  I headed off any retelling of humorous mortician stories. “I can’t wait to hear all about it, but May says you have news about Renata Parsons?”

  “Yeah, I do, but I don’t think you’re going to like it much.” For a moment he sounded unsure about how to proceed, but he pulled himself together. “I already told May, so I guess you can handle it,” he decided.

  Gee, thanks, I responded silently.

  “There was a big storm party at the hotel last night, since all the guests and staff were stuck here until the snow stopped, and Becky and I got to meet a bunch of regular hotel employees who got drafted to help serve food and stuff. They got lots of overtime, so most of them didn’t mind.”

  “Uh huh,” I said while my eyelids drooped.

  “I was assigned to the buffet table to help serve, and the girl next to me was on desserts, so we got to talking. I asked what she did on her regular job at the hotel, and she said she was a maid on the early shift. She’s in college during the day, so working from four to eleven a.m. fits the schedule she needs. I’d be a zombie, if I had to get up in the middle of the night, but she …”

  “Duane? I don’t mean to rush you, but May and I are pretty much both zombies at the moment, so if you could please get to it?” I pleaded.

  “Oh! Sorry. It’s just that Becky and I are having such a great time, it’s hard to stay focused. Did I mention I’ve been hanging out with the Hilton’s chief wine steward? He has a two-year degree, and he’s studying to be certified as a master sommelier. There are only a couple of hundred of them in the world. He asked me to be his assistant at the first dinner, and it’s wicked interesting. We really hit it off, so he’s letting him follow him around when I’m not assigned to do something else …”

  “Duane?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” May rose from the sofa and snatched the phone from my hand. “Duane? Go on back to having fun, and I’ll fill Kate in. Say hi to Becky for us, and remember, be discreet with the questions. ‘Bye now.” She disconnected and pushed me onto the other end of the sofa.

  “It’s amazing,” I murmured. “I can’t remember the last time I heard Duane sound so animated. He’s been in sort of a funk since Charlie left for UConn, but not now. Becky’s having a good time, too, I guess. Do you think we’re losing two employees?” I was only half joking.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” May reassured me, “but I have a feeling those two are going to be accepting weekend catering assignments from the Hilton from here on out.”

  “Sounds exhausting, but hey, they’re young. I can’t even remember what it feels like to be nineteen, but I know those two can handle it. Now what is it that Duane never got around to telling me?” I pulled my feet up under me and got comfortable.

  “This maid that Duane has become friendly with, the one on the early morning shift?”

  “Yes, he got that far. Was she on duty during the mysteries convention last weekend?”

  “She was, and better yet, she was working on Lizabeth Mulgrew’s floor, so she had a front row seat for all the drama in the wee hours.”

  “Wow, lucky,” I breathed, suddenly more alert. “What did she have to say?”

  May sat forward. “She told Duane that a couple of hours after she began her shift, around 5:30 a.m., she was sorting towels in the maids’ room, which is at the same end of the fourth floor as Lizzie’s room was. She was startled half out of her wits when a hotel guest tapped her on the shoulder and said she’d left her purse in a cab. Then she asked the girl to let her into Lizzie’s room with her passkey so she wouldn’t have to wake up, get this, ‘her roommate.’”

  I gasped. “Lizabeth didn’t have a roommate! What did this woman look like?”

  May smiled. “Skirt too short for her age and a pink streak in her hair. Ring any bells?”

  I struggled to take in this new information. “So Renata Parsons was actually in Lizabeth’s room around five-thirty Friday morning?”

  “According to this maid, she was,” May confirmed. “She told Duane the woman was wearing a coat but wasn’t carrying a purse, so her story sounded plausible, but she was forbidden to let her into another guest’s room, so she said sorry, no. She said the woman just shrugged and said she’d have to wake her roommate up, then, and she began knocking loudly on Lizabeth’s door. The maid remembered all this because she felt bad about having to say no.”

  “Wow, little did she know how bad she would have felt if she’d said yes,” I sympathized. “At least this way, if Renata is responsible for Lizabeth’s death, the maid has nothing to reproach herself with.”

  We were quiet for a few minutes, mulling over the implications of this new information.

  “Martin said he was called when the room service waiter didn’t get an answer at 6:30 a.m., but we know that’s not true, because he’s not on staff at the hotel. He also said a maid found Lizabeth’s letter under her pillow and handed it over to him, also one hundred percent not true. So how did he get the letter? And why did he bring it to you?” I mused out loud, doubtless echoing May’s own thoughts. As she listened, she narrowed her eyes and stroked Gracie, who had made herself comfortable between us on the couch.

  “He must have been there,” she said finally, “only not in the role he pretended to have when he talked with us. He must have seen Renata go into Lizzie’s room or known she was there some other way. Maybe Renata called him on a cell phone. Either way, I’m almost positive it was Renata who found the letter after something happened to trigger Lizzie’s death, and it was she who delivered it to Martin Schenk. Why she did that is the question I can’t answer.”

  “Yes,” I agreed slowly. “If they had all the information they needed to find the manuscript, even though Lizabeth’s message was encrypted to a certain extent, you would think they would have kept it to themselves. You never would have known about Lizzie’s proposed game of Find the Flash Drive unless Martin showed you that letter. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  After another long moment of thoughtful silence, I added, “And another thing. If it was Martin who trailed us to the Hubbard Library, and all indications are that he was the mystery man in the SUV, he knows we were there looking for the flash drive. So why would Renata assume that you already had it and be trashing your house to find it? They must have been aware of each other’s activities.”

  “Were they?” was all May had to say to insert yet another confusing element into the events of the past week.

  We both let out long, frustrated sighs. Our heads sagged against the back of the couch. We decided the best thing we coul
d do at this point was sleep on it, and after bidding Gracie goodnight and locking up the house, we trudged up the stairs and veered off to our respective bedrooms to do precisely that.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I awoke Sunday morning without the urging of alarm clock or hungry cat, a rare luxury, and snuggled more deeply under my down comforter. So enjoyable was the sensation that it took a few minutes for me to, one, remember I had a houseguest who could probably use some hot coffee and, two, wonder why Grace wasn’t purring loudly into my ear and patting my nose with one paw to encourage me to give her breakfast.

  Reluctantly, I dragged myself from my cocoon, pulled on a sweatshirt over my nightgown and performed minimal ablutions before descending to the kitchen. There my guilt was assuaged by the sight of May, neatly combed and robed, enjoying a mug of coffee she had very capably managed to brew for herself. Gracie crunched contentedly on her breakfast, also provided by May.

  “I should have known you’d be the perfect houseguest,” I applauded her as I headed for the coffee maker to pour myself a mug. What are you reading?”

  May looked a little startled and turned back to the cover of the magazine she was holding. “Beats me,” she replied. “I found it on your hall table. It says it’s Celebrity Magazine, but it surely doesn’t resemble the Celebrity I remember. I used to enjoy their thoughtful, in-depth interviews, but now it looks like every other overpriced rag in the supermarket racks … a mishmash of photos of anorexic teenagers and some two-sentence recaps of major events in their lives. When did everyone under the age of thirty begin to look alike, do you suppose?”